Hertie School
seramirezruiz.github.io | seramirezruiz
Research evidence can be valuable in informing and shaping policy decisions by equipping policymakers with necessary data and information to create and execute policies to address societal problems (e.g., Bavel et al. 2020; Berger et al. 2021; Geddes 2021)
The endeavor to understand how academic research insights are integrated into policymaking has a long tradition in the social sciences (Weiss 1979; Caplan 1979; Huberman 1994)
There is an apparent gap in this research.
Most of the narratives ignore the agency of policymakers in a crucial step… research evidence consumption.
I propose that digital traces from policymakers can provide valuable information to understand the nature of the evidence-policy nexus and contribute to the current knowledge base
In addition to the executive and its public service, legislatures around the globe also take efforts to inject evidence into policymaking (Ouimet et al. 2023).
But also, the functions and activities of legislatures make it interesting.
I collected roughly 3 million users and more than 30 million tweets.
I recover ≈413K unique researcher accounts from Twitter. In addition to, information about their research profile from OpenAlex (field of study, works, citations, etc.)
I map the researcher accounts onto the legislators’ Twitter data.
These legislators rarely follow research producers and engage with their content.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
The distributions of these behaviors are highly skewed. But, the legislators in this space are very specific.
For the most part, they are scientists themselves
German Bundestag
This is work-in-progress.